On 8/19/2018 at 9:38 PM, alnite said:

So, really, stop with the labeling. The Democrats love to say "If you voted for Trump, then you must also be racist."

I think @ChaosEngine summed this up nicely:

20 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

On 8/19/2018 at 9:38 PM, alnite said:

The Democrats love to say "If you voted for Trump, then you must also be racist." 

I don’t believe that everyone who voted for trump is racist, but it is demonstrably true that they supported a racist. 

And you can argue that Hillary had some unsavoury characteristics too, and I wouldn’t disagree with you. The difference is that most Democrats will admit to her faults (it’s probably why she lost). 

Trump supporters, OTOH, either deny his racism, or worse, actively support it. 

Also worth noting that you can be opposed to illegal immigration and yet still believe that people should be treated humanely. 

This cannot be emphasized more. It's not about whether Trump voters or current active Trump supporters exhibit racial bias or prejudice in their daily life: it's about the fact that they voted for a man who is a racist. Many many people in the US can't get past this simple fact here. Somehow the voters/supporters either simply didn't care about this fact, or genuinely believed that Trump is not a racist. Then there's the whole notion of the fairly large amount of people (granted, maybe a minority of the whole US, but still an uncomfortable number of people) who still go to great lengths of mental gymnastics to deny or defend his racism. 

I don't think you'd find many Hillary voters who would go to such great lengths to defend her flaws. Most of us that voted for Hillary knew she was a flawed candidate, for various reasons.

The point is that this is less about labeling and more about actions that we see and hear on a frequent basis, in many cases from people we may actually know personally.

Yea maybe people didn't vote for Trump because he's a racist. But people who voted for Trump did, at the minimum, ignore this, and that is very troublesome.

18 hours ago, grumpyOldDude said:

The last 3 posts points to and reinforces a very obvious flaw in US politics....

the 2 party system

If you disagree with 83% of what a candidate/party stands for and disagree 95% with the other candidate/party (minor parties and independents don't count as they have approx 0% votes), you are forced to vote for the candidate you disagree the least with and not because you agree with much of what that candidate stands for. But because you're so short of better choices

It forces you to make a binary black/white decision

That's killing democracy or maybe its better to say democracy is 75% dead in a country that thinks its a democracy and leader of the free world 

This primarily has to do with the sheer amount of influence and money that the two large parties have had.I'm not very sure what more there is beyond that that has caused this situation. Historically, the US has had more than 2 major parties. This trend is a trend from the last century. 

But yes, more choices would mean we may have had a possibility for a more sane electoral competition, like Hillary vs Bernie.

However, Trump was not a result of only 2 parties being present. This exacerbated the result, but Trump was nominated by the Republican Party, let's not forget. There's more to this than that. 

12 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

This primarily has to do with the sheer amount of influence and money that the two large parties have had.

I’m not so sure it does. I think you might be seeing effect as cause. 

I think the primary flaw in the US two party system is your voting method. First Past the Post is the worst possible system for democracy and almost always leads to a two party system for precisely the reasons @grumpyOldDude outlined; people don’t vote FOR a candidate, they vote AGAINST one. 

6 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

I think the primary flaw in the US two party system is your voting method. First Past the Post is the worst possible system for democracy and almost always leads to a two party system for precisely the reasons @grumpyOldDude outlined; people don’t vote FOR a candidate, they vote AGAINST one. 

Well, I live in a country with first-past-the-post electoral system and traditionally multiple significant political parties.  All I need is a single counter-example to disprove the proposition that first-past-the-post always leads to two parties.

I had the opportunity last weekend to view some US television.  I was aghast.  My observation is that there is definitely a pathological culture at the heart of the current political situation.  I don't know if it's been intelligently designed that way or it simply evolved, but there's definitely a life-threatening disease at play.  I mean, all the ads were either weight-loss-related targeted at (always young and slim appearing) women, hair loss prevention for men, medications to ask your doctor for, or insurance of some description or another.  If I were to be bombarded with that every day, I'd believe the sky is falling and I'll be too fat, bald, and undermedicated to do anything about it too.  Then I switch to Fox News.  Holy flocking sheep, I now understand why the press can sometimes be described as 'enemy of the people'.  I don't know the solution, but it's definitely a symptom of an underlying pathology that gets expressed in the voting booth as well.

6 hours ago, Bregma said:

All I need is a single counter-example to disprove the proposition that first-past-the-post always leads to two parties.

I did say “almost always”. It’s still a terrible system (example below)

 And what country do you live in (if you don’t mind saying)?

46 minutes ago, h8CplusplusGuru said:

I don't know, I'd say a lot of people voted for Obama. 

Fair point

On 8/22/2018 at 4:09 AM, Bregma said:

Then I switch to Fox News.  Holy flocking sheep, I now understand why the press can sometimes be described as 'enemy of the people'.  I don't know the solution, but it's definitely a symptom of an underlying pathology that gets expressed in the voting booth as well.

Fox News is Trump's favorite news source actually, since they always paint Trump in the best light possible. In fact, Fox News is more like Trump Propaganda Network. It's a load of massive BS. 

The press that Trump calls the 'enemy of the people' is basically anyone who's critical of him. He isn't pointing out a relevant problem: he just doesn't like anyone being critical of him. Fox News spins the same line as well.

Really the whole the 'media is rigged' line is complete and utter nonsense and has been from day one. If you want to talk about legitimate issues with US based media, then that's different. The thing is that now the whole Trump movement has become almost a cult in some ways, so it's hard to break that illusion that people have bought into.

On 8/21/2018 at 9:54 PM, ChaosEngine said:

I’m not so sure it does. I think you might be seeing effect as cause. 

I think the primary flaw in the US two party system is your voting method. First Past the Post is the worst possible system for democracy and almost always leads to a two party system for precisely the reasons @grumpyOldDude outlined; people don’t vote FOR a candidate, they vote AGAINST one. 

I'd say it's also a result of pure apathy. People just don't care. I've got friends who are actually still buying the line that 'they are all terrible, so why bother?'. It still blows my mind that after all of this people still think that 'they are all terrible'. This screams of simply not bothering to actually understand what's going on.